The NRC review of the DOE Yucca Mountain involves an independent scientific and technical appraisal to determine whether the application demonstrates compliance with the million-year EPA safety standard.

It would be extraordinarily disappointing, and invite lawsuits, to see the Obama administration use executive branch authority to terminate this scientific review, particularly in a case where there would be a clear perception that withdrawing the application is a political payoff to supporters during the primary election.

The DOE license application shows very large margins for compliance with the million-year EPA standard. The problem is not with the capability of the repository to comply with the safety standard, but instead is with our policy for how and when to use this repository.

Rather than using executive branch authority to terminate the NRC license review, what we really need is the political leadership to craft a major revision to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that would establish a long-term national policy to store and recycle rather than dispose spent fuel, strictly limit the use of Yucca Mountain to defense high level wastes and materials that have high heat generation or conceivable long-term economic value, authorize construction of a repository next to the existing WIPP facility that would be strictly limited to residual, low-heat-rate wastes from civil reprocessing that would have no conceivable long-term economic value, and provide substantial economic compensation to affected communities.

Per Peterson

The DOE has submitted its license application for Yucca Mountain to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for their independent technical review. Let's take a couple of years and see what the NRC's conclusions are about whether Yucca Mountain can meet the 1-million year EPA safety standard. With the latest events, the Nevada NWPO does not have a lot of credibility, so the best thing to do is to see what the NRC concludes from their review.

This article contains a key error. A president could present a budget to Congress that does not include funding for Yucca Mountain. Under the Constitution, Congress decides what to fund. Congress can, and almost certainly will, appropriate funds for the NRC to complete it scientific review of DOE's Yucca Mountain license application.

Second, both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have stated that they oppose Yucca Mountain because they believe that the science is flawed. In the end, they are unlikely to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application before it completes its scientific review by the NRC, because then they would be clearly basing their decision upon politics, not upon science.

On the Republican side there are Senators who have worked to cut funding for climate science, presumably because they believe that the science on climate will disagree with their preferred policy to not limit carbon emissions. Who believes, in the end, that an Obama or a Clinton administration will cut of the scientific review of Yucca Mountain when it would be an obvious political choice to ignore and silence the science?

McCain has said that he will abide by the conclusions of the NRC's independent scientific review of Yucca Mountain. I would expect no less of Senator Obama or Senator Clinton.